Offering truth beyond the mere black and white.
"Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will." -- Antonio Gramsci"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." -- John Kenneth Galbraith"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell

Friday, November 24, 2017

When it comes to the presidency, playing golf may seem like a trivial matter, but in this case it's just another example of how Trump worked the mother-of-all cons to slip into the White House.

All In with Chris Hayes recently aired a devastating extended video clip on this topic. After explaining how Trump has spent about 1/3 of his time in office at a Trump property, there is a collection of a video clips showing Trump on the campaign trail repeatedly dissing Obama for playing too much golf and how when Trump is president he would rarely, if ever, go golfing.

Fact: Trump is currently on pace to double the amount of golf Obama played. Double.

This from a loud-mouth gas bag who did not shut up about Obama playing golf, making it almost a central issue in his campaign. As shown in the video, Trump's criticism was relentless and incessant.

There is a growing laundry list of items making plain how Trump is the ultimate hypocrite. Draining the swamp (not), being a president for all (not), reduce presidential executive orders (not), investigate election fraud (not), to name a few. Oh, and play less golf than Obama (not).

If there's one thing in which Trump is truly a master, it's conning people. Trump supporters are not so much "deplorables" as they are "gullibles."

Yet Paul Ryan and his cast of merry minions would have us believe quite the opposite.

It's not just Trump who can work the big con, Republicans have been pulling this three-card Monte crap for many years. In fact, Trump is the logical leader of the GOP. Together they hoist flimflam on a daily basis, deceiving and outright lying to the public. And for the most part, getting away with it.

Well that's pretty clear, people disapprove of Trump by a huge 16% margin. How could this be? According to Trump, he's beloved, OR he's not getting enough love (predictably, he says both). After all, the stock market is soaring and the economy is humming, what's not to like?

Truth be told, the stock market had already tripled during Obama's time in office, so Trump has a long ways to go to surpass that figure. And the economy was doing quite nicely when Obama exited, so how much of what we're seeing with the economy isn't still just spillover from the Obama years? When do economic stats officially become Trump's?

But put another way, assuming everything is just hunky dory, then why the 16% disapproval spread? Either Americans do not believe or feel that things are so great, despite what Trump wants us to believe, OR things are in fact going well but regardless, people happen to disapprove of Trump.

Or it could be that despite economic conditions, people believe things aren't going so great for them AND they disapprove of Trump. The two polls above concerning the "Direction of Country" average to 59.5% Wrong Track vs. 33.5% Right Direction, for a whopping 26% difference siding with the country being on the wrong track.

So people disapprove of Trump by a 16% margin and they believe the country is on the wrong track by a 26% margin. Wow.

The other two remaining polls have the Democrats slightly ahead by 3% in a generic Congressional vote, and then Moore has pulled back ahead by 2% over Jones. Both of these polls are within the statistical margin of error making them not all that significant. However, I would love to see a non-Alabama-voter poll on the Alabama race, i.e. I'd love to see what the rest of the country feels about this high-profile Alabama contest. I have a feeling Moore would be well behind Jones.

What does that matter? It would be another reflection of what the entire country thinks about something, as opposed to just the state of Alabama. And again I'm willing to bet that in a national poll, Moore would be double-digits behind Jones.

But what about other subjects, how do they poll? Well let's see, the FCC announced yesterday that they plan to overturn net neutrality, where does the public fall on this topic? Americans favor net neutrality overwhelmingly. How about Obamacare? People favor the ACA. Global warming? Most Americans believe that climate change is real and is man-made. The Republican tax bill? The majority of peopleoppose it. The border wall? Most people do notwant it.

You get the picture. On almost every issue, the majority of Americans are against what Trump (and Republicans for that matter) is for or believes. I can't recall a time when the country was so across-the-board opposite of the president. It's Bizarro USA!

How can this be called a representative democracy? The fact is it's not, or it's a deeply flawed one. Rather, today's America is a byproduct of 1) the Electoral College, an outdated mechanism that subverts the popular vote and instead indirectly elects the president, and 2) gerrymandering, where too many district maps are excessively partisan in favor of Republicans.

The Electoral College was adopted as a compromise and centered on slavery -- needless to say, it has outlived its original purpose and should have long ago been repealed. The fact that a Wyoming vote counts 3.6 times more than a California vote should be reason enough to get rid of this archaic, undemocratic system. No voter should count more than any other in a true democracy.

As for gerrymandering, just look at Michigan as an example of how bad things have become. In last November's election, Michigan voters basically split 50/50 in the state and yet Republicans sent 9 representatives to DC as opposed to just 5 for the Democrats. The SCOTUS is expected to rule on gerrymandering over the next several months, stay tuned.

But clearly it seems that we currently have a government that does not represent the beliefs or will of the majority. There's no way to MAGA as long as this condition holds.

Wednesday, November 08, 2017

Fox News coverage of last night's election was near nonexistent.From Slate:

Laura Ingraham's show began at 10, and Ingraham used the majority of her hour on segments about the armed civilian who attempted to intervene during this weekend's Texas shooting, the question of why liberals are "so offended and bothered by prayer," disgraced O.J Simpson detective Mark Fuhrman's opinions about gun control, and Trump's achievements in "confronting evil." She finally made it to Virginia at 10:50, whereupon viewers learned that Gillespie lost because he actually didn't imitate Trump enough.

This from the self-proclaimed "fair and balanced" propaganda news channel. I know Fox viewers live in a bubble, but weren't they even wondering what was going on? I'm fairly certain most people knew that it was election night, which typically involves results -- you know, winners and losers. And yet Fox seemingly decided, "f*ck our viewers, the dim bulbs, they don't need to know about the bad news, besides it will just upset them!"The timing of Trump's globe-trotting trip has seemed a bit too well-timed to me. Perhaps expecting this bad news, better to get out of Dodge, thus avoiding the questions and hard reality. But his trip also allowed for -- wait for it -- yes, a diversion. Is it just a coincidence that Trump's speech last night started right around when most news channels would be covering the election results? Hmm.

Last night's election results were the first dominos to fall. Granted, Luther Strange may have been the actual first falling domino, but with Republican candidates in VA and NJ being soundly defeated, hopefully the domino chain reaction continues into next November.

Will these results serve as a head-slap to the GOP, that they need to become more like Flake and Corker and breakaway from Trump? We'll see, but I remain highly skeptical. As it is, the conservative diversion apparatus is blaming the VA loss on Gillespie not cozying up enough to Trump. Nice, blame the victim. But by all accounts Gillespie did eventually steer hard right towards Trump, embracing the dog-whistle, racist tactics that Trump's base finds so appealing. All for naught.

To me, the most eye-opening result on the night was the win by transgender candidate Danica Roem. I thought it was startling not because Danica won, but rather because she beat a staunch anti-LGBT conservative, Robert Marshall, who the Washington Post describes as "a 13-term incumbent who called himself Virginia’s 'chief homophobe' and earlier this year introduced a 'bathroom bill' that died in committee."

How does a district go from putting a guy like Marshall in office for 13-terms and then do a 180-about-face and elect Danica? And she didn't just win, she trounced him, winning by a huge 9% margin! I'm both elated and confused. Did the voters suddenly wake up out of a 13-term coma and realize how wrong they were on so many issues? Does this local race speak volumes about the direction Trump has taken the country and the resounding blowback??